What’s A Sales Pipeline Anyway? (And How It Impacts Sales Results)

Sales pipeline — a term that gets thrown around so much, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s an empty catchphrase that simply makes salespeople who use it look like sales professionals. But your sales management operations can benefit from using a sales pipeline, and it could make a significant difference to your bottom line.

“It’s not a matter of whether you’ll get improvements. It’s just a matter of how much,” said Mark McInnes, who was recognized by LinkedIn as Australia’s No. 1 social seller and serves as an execution coaching partner at Sydney-based SalesITV.

A sales pipeline is a visual and systematic approach to selling a product or service. It allows salespeople to get a grasp of exactly where their money, deals, and other sales efforts are at all times (we’ll dive more into the pipeline below).

McInnes spoke about a client who wasn’t using a sales pipeline, and as a result, they had “little or no stats at all” about how effective their sales process was and whether their business was headed in the right direction.

But, once he implemented a sales pipeline into his business, McInnes recalled:

“Just having that level of visibility and accountability helped manage everyone’s deals and quotas. That was their best year ever.”

Sales experts explain the sales pipeline

A sales pipeline can be compared to your doctor doing a blood test.

“You can read a lot into what’s wrong and what’s right about you, and it enables the management to apply the right fixes to make a ‘sick’ company healthy,” said David P. Wallace, who has more than 30 years of sales and marketing experience and serves as the principal and founding partner of the New York-based Sales Management Group.

A sales pipeline can also be seen as a funnel that contains a set of opportunities the salesperson has identified. As more and more of those opportunities, or leads, move throughout the funnel, the salesperson is able to determine which ones will close.

“Leads and opportunities go to the top of the pipe and move down the pipe as the deal gets closer to closing,” McInnes said. A great way to store these deals is to allocate different sections. You might have a ‘lead’ or ‘opportunity’ or ‘discovery phase’ or ‘negotiations’, and the last one would be ‘close’ or ‘follow-up.’ You put your deals on the left side of the pipeline, and you slowly move them through the pipeline as you interact with customers, until they close.”

As you move through the different stages of your pipeline or funnel, the chances of a deal closing increase. Maybe they show interest and the chance goes up to 30%, then you do a demo for them and the chance goes up to 60%. By the time the lead reaches the narrowest end of the funnel, when you agree on all the terms of the deal, you’ll have a 100% chance to close it.

Pipeline visibility increases your bottom line

The visibility a sales pipeline provides serves as the foundation to increasing your company’s bottom line.

A sales pipeline is close to most salespeople’s hearts because it’s where all of their money sits.

“But many companies don’t prioritize proper management of that potential money,” said Michelle Seger, executive director and global practice lead at Atlanta-based SalesGlobe, where she helps companies from around the world improve their sales results.

“Companies don’t know what their possibilities are,” Seger said. If you can actually look at your activities, how long they’ve been there and what are your conversion rates, it tells you where you are and what’s not working.”

Setting up your pipeline

The sales pipeline can be constructed in various ways — sticky notes or an Excel spreadsheet. But if you have a complex or long sales cycle, you may want to use a CRM for efficiency. It’ll allow you to link contacts to deals, integrate email correspondence, see data insight in real time, automate tasks that will keep you on top of your game, and more.

1. Set stages: As the sales pipeline is built around your sales cycle, or all of the steps you take to close a deal, the first step would be to sort out the stages in your ideal pipeline so you can get your deals moving properly.

Depending on your industry, those stages may vary, but they might be:

• Idea
• Contact Made
• Needs Discovered
• Proposal Presented
• In Negotiation
• Close

2. Calculate goals: It’s important to have an idea of how many deals you win on average, at any stage, so you’ll know whether you are on track to success — at any given moment. This insight into your conversion rates tests your sales process, evaluates whether your sales team is performing at the level you need them to, and exposes where you have very specific needs, according to Seger. “Salespeople look at it as very daunting, but it’s not. It’s an untapped opportunity of looking at performance and what the needs are, and the data is right there,” she added.

This visibility allows a sales rep to know where they should be spending their time. McInnes explained that it’s especially important due to the diverse activities that happen in a salesperson’s day.

“Salespeople spend 13-20% of their time actually selling, and the rest of the time doing other activities — administration, email, social media,” he said. “You have to make certain activities to make your goals. Knowing how many you need to make for every quarter is very important, and if you can manage it on a daily, you can meet your target.”

Seger agreed, saying it’s easy to get lost in the activities without pipeline visibility.

“A sales pipeline provides an accurate framework for how a sales rep can manage his or her time. It provides a snapshot of all the opportunities they work on, and what‘s taking too long or what they need to do. Pipeline visibility helps your sales reps focus on what’s real,” Seger said. It also helps sales managers understand “where reps are spending their time.”

3. Build momentum: When you’re moving your deals stage-to-stage, it’s important to cite what factors help you advance your deal, so you can focus on performing those activities and continue to keep deals flowing in. It could be sending a written proposal, identifying the stakeholders, or getting a budget approved — there’s an event at each stage that moves the deal along.

You can’t control results, but constantly focusing on these activities will inevitably lead to better results.

“Pipeline visibility gives you the ability to look at statistics — how many calls, emails and meetings you’ve had with prospects,” McInnes said. “You can quickly see if you’re falling behind and need to do more, and that’s what’s going to keep you accountable and help you make your quarter.”

Seger said pipeline visibility will also show you the obstacles that stand in the way of moving forward with a deal. In each stage of the pipeline, there’s a “pivotal decision to make — if we’re going to go the next stage,” she said.

Knowing why a deal is stalling and how long it’s been in your pipeline so far helps you make that pivotal decision.

4. Find a routine: A sales pipeline helps you see where multiple deals stand, so it’s easier to manage them and remember which steps you need to take to close many more deals.  Activities that add new deals to your pipeline need to be part of your routine — daily or weekly, depending on your business.

If you have a three-month sales cycle, for instance, and you’re only working on one deal at a time, you can only sell four times a year. You need to fill the sales pipeline with as many deals as you can, so you’re closing business every day or every week instead of every three months.

“If you fill your pipeline, you can have a regular stream of business that’s closing, which means a regular stream of commission checks,” Wallace said.

Multitask and know where your next deal will come from

Having a sales pipeline will allow you to make smarter business decisions to obtain success throughout your entire company.

“Pipeline visibility is a key management tool primarily because the pipeline is what drives a lot of business decisions across the organization, not just in sales. It has ramifications for production, marketing, HR,” Wallace said.

“If you don’t have the right visibility, you don’t know how many resources to have on board or how much cash you’re going to have,” he said. “Without a pipeline visibility it’s difficult to manage a business.”

McInnes added that sales pipeline visibility is critical to your entire business.

“If you don’t have a clear picture,” he said, “you’re not in control of your business, and that’s pretty crazy.”

4 Tips to Get Your Dental Lab's Emails Mobile-Ready

By:  David H. Khalili,  Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Email is and continues to be a vital part of dental lab digital marketing success. 

Especially small dental labs on a limited budget can use the concept to effectively communicate with their audience, slowly nudging them to become first-time and repeat customers.

At the same time, email marketing can only be successful if you design effective messages that resonate with your audience of your dental lab. One key consideration to keep in mind is the fact that an increasing percentage of that audience will view your messages on a mobile device; in fact, up to 70% of your audience will read your message on their smartphone or tablet. If you are looking to grow your dental lab with email marketing, keep these 4 best practices for mobile-friendly email creation in mind.

1) Keep them Short

Above all, your audience's attention span on mobile devices is shorter than on a desktop. Because they can see less of your email on their screens, they will be more quickly turned off by long emails that go into detail about a specific concept. 

One study suggests that for optimum results, your emails should be between 50 and 125 words long. For comparison, that's about the length of the introduction to this post. Anything longer, and you risk decreasing response rates as mobile recipients lose interest midway through reading your message.

2) Stay Away from Long Paragraphs

For the same reasons mentioned above, try to stay away from full paragraphs as much as possible. Avoid the dreaded 'wall of text,' which becomes especially noticeable on small screen sizes.

Instead, take advantage of email formatting options. Bullet points, numbered lists, and single-sentence paragraphs can go a long way toward making your email more readable on mobile devices, you may also want to consider using graphics and call to action buttons to break up your text.

3) Use Visuals to Enhance, not Distract

Speaking of graphics: including visuals in your email can go a long way toward increasing its effectiveness. Visual content marketing has been proven to be successful, increasing audience goodwill and message recall.

But for mobile devices, you should be careful to use visuals strategically. Much like long paragraphs, large images that prevent smartphone users to see any other part of the content tend to distract the audience, making it less likely that they will take action. Stay away from large banner images, and incorporate smaller, slimmer graphics into your email instead.

4) Test Your Emails

Finally, make sure to not send out any email to your audience without first testing how it looks on mobile devices. Most email clients now offer templates with responsive design, adjusting dynamically based on screen size. But that could mean the content of your email shifts around in ways that you didn't anticipate.

To ensure that your content does not begin to look undesirable, send yourself a test email to view it on your mobile devices. Most Customer Relationship Management software now allows you to do just that. If you are lucky and your CRM enables you to view a visual preview of the email in different email clients and screen sizes without even having to send it, you should absolutely take advantage of that feature.

Keeping Mobile In Mind at all Times

Audiences across industries and demographics are increasingly relying on mobile devices to complete internet-related tasks. Whether your brand markets to other dental labs or just dentist, keeping mobile in mind when communicating with your target audience has become absolutely crucial.  In fact, to effectively grow your dental, that emphasis should come even before you send out your first email marketing messages.  

To learn more about our services, and how it can accommodate your dental lab marketing needs, contact us today 1.888.715.9099 or visit DentalLabSupport.com.

Why Your Dental Lab Is Chasing Too Many Bad Sales Leads

David H. Khalili,
Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Stop chasing bad sales leads by doing the right work upfront. With better inbound lead qualification processes, your company can turn more of your leads into big sales

Many dental labs don’t do enough upfront work to qualify their new sales leads. They simply pass every single sales lead through to the sales team, even if the prospect is nowhere near ready to buy or is even a good fit for what the company sells.

According to statistics cited by HubSpot, 61 percent of B2B companies send all of their business leads directly to sales, even though only 27 percent of those leads will be qualified to count as “serious buyers.” Having too many unqualified sales leads wastes the time of the sales team and causes the company to miss out on legitimate sales opportunities. When your salespeople are bombarded with low-quality leads that aren’t a good fit for your product or service, they’re going to miss the chance to talk with prospects who are legitimately good sales opportunities.

If your company is chasing bad sales leads, the following strategies will help you better qualify your inbound sales inquiries upfront:

Ask Lead-Qualifying Questions

Not all sales leads are the same, so why would your company want to treat them all the same? After all, every single prospect is unique; they all have different problems and pain points and budgetary concerns, and they all have unique business needs that your solution has to address. But if your company is simply passing every sales lead along to the sales team without even asking any questions, you’re missing a big chance to learn more about the prospect.

Asking questions to qualify the sales leads is a simple step that you can take to start prioritizing and ranking your sales leads. By asking sales-related exploratory questions, you are starting to build trust and build a relationship, and you’re learning more about the larger picture of the customer’s business challenges. Asking questions also helps you do “lead scoring” to rank your sales leads based on how likely they are to buy. This is somewhat of an inexact process, but with time, you’ll get better at deciphering the subtle clues and behaviors of prospects to see which ones are genuinely interested and which ones are just calling around to do research or get price quotes.

Ask Open-Ended Questions

Asking lead-qualifying questions is a subtle process that requires some skill and savvy. For example, you don’t want to be too direct or aggressive by asking questions such as, “Do you have a budget for this purchase?” or “Are you definitely in the market for a new solution?” or “Are you looking to buy sometime soon?” These questions tend to create sales pressure and make the prospect feel defensive.

Instead of putting the customer under pressure, start by asking open-ended questions that get them to talk about their overall business situation. For example, you could ask, “What challenges are you experiencing with your current solution?” This helps get the customer to open up a bit and share their frustrations that are causing them to seek a new vendor. Or you could ask, “How is your current solution impacting your overall business processes?” This is a great question, because it helps you analyze the overall picture at the prospect’s business and evaluate how urgently they might be looking to make a purchase decision.

Every lead-qualifying question is your chance to hear more from the customer. Get them to open up about their business challenges, and then really listen to what they say.

Follow Up By Phone

Other companies make the mistake of relying too much on automated systems. For example, when you get new inbound sales inquiries via your website or online advertising, you might have an automated email reply or online intake form that asks the prospect some questions about what they’re looking to buy. These automated tools can be helpful, but you can’t rely on a fully automated lead qualification process.

Instead, call people back. Get on the phone and have a detailed conversation that allows for the “human element” of relationship building and establishing trust. Even with the great technology we have today, you still need to get on the phone and talk with your customers.

Why? For one thing, the buyers who are most urgently looking to make a decision want to hear back from your company immediately, and from a real person. Motivated buyers are probably contacting several of your competitors, and according to HubSpot’s cited statistics, 35-50 percent of sales go to the vendor who responds first.

Some prospects are never going to be the right fit for what you sell, and not everyone is a “good” customer. But with better inbound lead qualification processes – one that includes asking good questions, sorting and ranking the sales leads and following up quickly – your company can turn more of your sales leads into big sales.

About DentalLabSupport.com

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David H. Khalili is the founder and CEO of DentalLabSupport.com, an industry-founding lead generation firm based in Los Angeles. His company helps Dental Lab companies to generate sales leads and improve their sales processes. For more information please contact us at info@dentallabsupport.com or 1.888.715.9099.

How to Run a Productive Dental Lab Sales Meeting

Meetings are an essential aspect of running a successful dental lab sales operation, but too often are thought of as necessary evils. There are numerous ways they can be sabotaged — there are no-shows, people spend the meeting twiddling their thumbs or on their phones, big talkers dole out too much, others spend time hiding and counting down the clock, and so on.

Meetings have long been considered a curse in the business world, eating into an extraordinary amount of a dental lab’s most valuable resource — time. The good news is: There are still ways to conduct productive sales meetings. Adopt the following tips and you’ll increase your chances of promoting your sales objectives in meetings. Just as importantly, you’ll also spend less time in meetings and more time selling.

Find your purpose

Why are we here?

Productive sales meetings have a purpose. Can you identify your main desired outcome?

• Are you dealing with short-term or long-term sales objectives?
• Are you going to discuss the company’s latest sales reports?  
• Are you enhancing your sales negotiation skills?
• Are you creating a sales contest?

Get with the agenda

If it’s not important enough to create an agenda, is it important enough to attend a meeting?

If you don’t have an agenda, then your meeting will probably just turn into a “conversation” where the most dominant people speak.

An agenda should go beyond just laying out the obvious, namely:

• Purpose of the meeting.
• Attendees (both required and optional attendees).
• Location (or alternative method of attending).

The agenda should also detail:

• Topics to be discussed.
• Decisions to be made.
• Allotted time for each topic/decision. 

Share some successes  

Who’s winning?

One straightforward way to kick off a sales meeting is to encourage attendees to briefly share a success they’ve had since the last time the team met. This reinforces a sense of optimism. It also helps people feel like they’re part of the meeting, instead of just an observer. And if there are negative topics to cover, this puts any problems in a wider context.

Harness the power of recognition and praise

Who’s ready for some encouragement?

People crave acknowledgement. Also, there’s more than just anecdotal evidence that recognizing good work and saying thank you is a great idea; research shows that when sales managers use praise, their employees are more productive overall. So if you’re leading a meeting, don’t miss an opportunity to motivate your team by letting them know they’re appreciated.

Prevent the meeting from going off course

What were we just talking about?

It’s better if everyone chips in to make sure the meeting stays on track — not just the boss or most senior person in the room. To prevent well-intentioned people from derailing a meeting:

• Rein in the ramblers and ask them to keep their comments to a minimum.
• Beware of tangents that stray from the agenda — be ready to put tangents in their place.
• If a topic comes up that only relates to a few attendees, move it offline so that everyone’s time is respected.
• Balance the need for everyone to feel heard with the need to accomplish the goals of the meeting.

If no matter how hard you try, you still can’t keep meetings on track and on time, there is a nuclear option: meetings at the end of the day. If you schedule a meeting, say, 20 minutes before your salespeople are supposed to knock off, this might be the saving grace that prevents them from straying off topic.

Confirm next steps

OK people, who is doing what?

Recap, recap, recap . . .  before leaving the room.

In a TED Talk, Jason Fried says: “Meetings are places to go to talk about things you’re supposed to be doing later.” With that in mind, just before a meeting ends, make sure you agree what are each salesperson’s next steps. Ideally, these steps should be concretely linked to activity goals. Leaving the meeting, each salesperson should be clear about the decisions made and deadlines set during the meeting that impact their activities.

Track progress

How are we tracking decisions and outcomes of this meeting?

You should check on the progress being made between meetings, either using a central checklist or process document. Because each salesperson’s objectives were properly defined in the first meeting, you now know the goals and deadlines to track. One of the key goals of tracking steps is to identify any roadblocks or other issues impeding progress — of individual salespeople, or the team-at-large — and address any problems that protects your overarching sales goals.

To make sure your salespeople hit their activity goals, encourage them to use block logic to book slots in their calendars. Block logic allows salespeople to manage multiple demands and their time more effectively, to aid focus and achieve more.

Now to get all your sales ducks in a row …

DentalLabSupport is all about productivity. Our sales management software helps you focus on the most vital parts of your business, so you can bring in more money, faster. But software alone can’t transform your salespeople into an efficient, effective sales team. In terms of meetings, it takes discipline and leadership to improve structure and order — and ultimately their quality. Incorporating the above tips into your sales meetings so they become habits is a strong step in the right direction to gaining control over your sales meetings.

But whatever you do today, make sure you don’t let your salespeople or your company down by holding unnecessary, ineffective or inefficient sales meetings.

For more information, visit DentalLabSupport.com or call 1-888-715-9099 

Email Marketing Tips to Retain your Dentist's

By: David H. Khalili, Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Effective email marketing not only converts your prospects to customers… it helps to retain and maintain your Dentist base so they keep coming back to you for more.  It is much easier (and takes less work) to retain a current client than it is marketing for a new one.  They’ve purchased your product or service, so they already know, like, and trust you.  The key here is to continue building relationships with your customer list and create a WOW factor to convert them into loyal fans of your brand.

And email marketing is the proven way to achieve this goal!

You see, email marketing is said to generate 50% more sales compared to other marketing strategies with an impressively high conversion rate.  No business or organization can afford to overlook this technique and stay current on its strategies.  It plays a huge role in the success of any company

Here are four tips to help you retain more customers and grow your small business with email marketing:

#1 Keep the focus on your customers…not your product!

This may seem like a no-brainer but how often do you receive emails from companies that constantly talk about their product?  Separate yourself from amongst the masses by thinking about your target market and their problems.  What are their needs?  Who are they?  What do they enjoy doing?  How does your product or service meet their demands?  Share content that benefits your audience.

Giving value is a sure way to keep your customers liking and trusting you.

#2 Keep it short and simple

With the endless distractions of the Internet, messaging, videos, etc., its important to get right to the point in your message and use designs that are simple to follow.  Make your intentions clear quickly (in 3 lines if possible) by sharing a problem that your target market faces and how they can solve it by clicking on the following link (or whatever your goal of the email is).

And by the way, never ever send an email message with a call to action!  Tell your readers what to do next (typically its to click on a link).

#3 Include Video Link in Your Email Content

Using the word “video” in the email subject line boosts open rates by 19% and click-through rates by a whopping 65 percent Therefore, every time you create new media (and blog) content, be sure to promote to your subscribers.  This keeps your brand in their forefront.  Your CRM can easily connect your contacts to platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, allowing you to better leverage your time.

#4 Segment Your Email List

This tip is golden!  There’s nothing like a subscriber getting an email they feel was created just for them, also known as contextual emails.  These emails are personalized uniquely for the customer, speaking directly to their qualities.  Segment your list by using criteria like geography, age, interest, or responsiveness towards certain email messages.  Subscribers are more apt to open and react to your messages when the content resonates with their interests.

Customer retention is critical for the success of any company.  You want your clients to continue doing business with you for a long-term sustaining organization.  Leveraging your email marketing with your CRM software tool properly will help you maintain those relationships thus driving sales, boosting revenues, and creating happy customers.  A win-win for all!

Metrics Can Help Your Dental Lab Close More Dentist

By David H. Khalili, Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Ultimately, the goal of any Dental Lab is to attract and retain dentists. Closing sales is a crucial part of that; if you get members of your target audience into your sales pipeline, but they never end up becoming customers, your efforts will be wasted. Marketing software can help your Dental Lab close more sales, but only if you know just what metrics matter in measuring your success. Here are 4 metrics to pay attention to as you optimize your sales process.

1) Lead Origin

Do you know where your leads come from? How did they learn about you, and where did they first made contact? If you gather this information, you can gain a better understanding of which leads are most likely to convert to customers.

For example, you may find that leads originated from your website are actually more likely to become customers than those who contacted you directly. Now, you can increase your focus on the former to maximize your success and close a higher percentage of sales.

2) Lead Engagement

Your LabCell Marketing Software can help you measure just how engaged your contacts are with your content after they sign up to become a lead. As you can probably imagine, leads who continue to open and click through your emails, or read conversion pages on your website, will be more likely to become customers than those who sign up initially, but never follow up.

Measuring lead engagement comprehensively allows you to categorize them into a number of groups, which your sales team can then use to prioritize its effort. Time is limited, and pitching your company only to leads who have shown continued interest in your product or service can be a valuable tool to improve your closure rate.

3) Average Lead to Customer Time

You may also want to consider measuring the amount of time it takes for a lead to turn into a customer. How many days, weeks, or months do they need in your system before they're ready for a sale? How many emails do they receive on average before indicating their readiness to buy?

Answering these questions helps you establish an average time line for your lead. If they don't become sales-ready until at least a month into the process, making the sales call a week after they enter your database will be of little value. Timing your sales-based communication means increasing your chances of reaching them at a time when they are most likely to make a buying decision.

4) Internal and Industry Conversion Rates

On average, how many of your leads turn into customers? Knowing that number, and how it compares with figures common for your industries, can go a long way toward helping you determine the effectiveness and success of both your lead nurturing and your sales efforts.

If you lag significantly behind industry averages, you may want to investigate just why that is, and how you can rectify the situation. Of course, simply running ahead of the average also deserves further investigation: you want to understand why, so you can replicate the process for future leads. Either way, knowing both your internal and industry conversion rates can help you close more sales in the future.

Of course, none of the above is possible without Marketing Software that tracks your interactions with your leads, and provides you with reports that help better understand the buying journey your leads take on their way to becoming customers. They can help your business close more sales, but only with the help of software that makes tracking them easily.

For information on LabCell Dental Lab Marketing Software please visit DentalLabSupport.com.

Starting Early: How Message Consistency Can Help You Close More Doctors

By David H. Khalili,  Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Every dental lab wants to maximize its sales process. But in reality, that's often easier said than done. By the time your sales department picks up the phone and calls a lead, their decision on whether or not to become a customer has probably already been made..

You can still convince members of your dental audience who are on the fence to go one way or the other, but if you truly want to improve your sales rates, you have to start earlier. From the moment your target audience is first exposed to your brand, they will begin to form an opinion about your brand that ultimately impacts their likelihood of becoming a customer. So if you are looking for effective ways to close more sales, you have to start early: with message consistency.

Messaging and Branding

The ultimate marketing goal of every business should be to create a consistent brand. Global powerhouses like Nike and Apple succeed because everyone knows their brand and has a general ideal of what it stands for. How did they get to that point? 

Below is a list of 7 key characteristics that successful dental laboratories share. They include:

1.  Audience Knowledge
2. Uniqueness
3. Passion
4. Consistency
5. Competitiveness
6. Exposure
7. Leadership.

Achieving any of these characteristics for your brand as a dental lab requires a thoughtful, strategic approach. But for the purposes of this post, we will focus on what we would argue is the single most important aspect of branding: consistency.

Think about it from a Dentist's point of view. If you hear about a dental lab a few times, and the message or visual identity is different every single time, it will be impossible form a coherent image of that brand in your mind. If, however, the same brand establishes a clear visual and textual identity, focusing on the same core benefit again and again, it will be much easier for you to form a reliable opinion about that brand. Consistency, in other words, is absolute key.

The Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance

At this point, you may be wondering how branding and message consistency plays into your ability to close more dentist. To answer that question, we have to explain a key psychological concept that applies to all of us: cognitive dissonance.

In social psychology, dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner motivation to keep our attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge in harmony, and avoid disharmony at all costs. If, however, messages conflict with each other or don't line up in our minds as desired, we tend to discount all variations as untrue to maintain harmony.

If you're not careful, cognitive dissonance can affect your sales efforts in the dental lab, in a very tangible way. If your messaging throughout the marketing campaign, leading up to the final sales call, has not been consistent to create a firm brand image in your leads' mind, they will dismiss your company as not credible and the final sales call will do little to persuade them otherwise. And even if the marketing has been consistent in itself, a sales call that's inconsistent with previous promotional messages can lead potential customers on the fence to say no to your company.

How a CRM Improves Message Consistency

Consistency, in other words, is crucial for your business to close more sales. Fortunately, Customer Relationship Management software can help you increase and maintain that consistency, in two ways:

• Consistent email marketing. If your email marketing relies on sending impromptu messages to potential customers, you run the risk of sending conflicting messages without even noticing it. A single change in phrase can suggest something entirely different to your audience. A CRM allows you to set up and automate your promotional messages, increasing the consistency as a result.
• Consistent Marketing-Sales Hand Off. Especially if your marketing and sales efforts are maintained by different departments, integrating both to maintain message consistency can be difficult. Because CRM software stows all of your contact information, your sales department can make more informed sales calls based on information your marketing department has gathered in previous efforts.

 In short, optimizing your sales efforts starts with message consistency. To learn more about how a CRM can help you achieve just that and maximize your ROI, contact us at 888.715.9099 or visit DentalLabSupport.com